In her mind, she screamed. A mewling cry escaped her lips.
She saw herself fighting him off. The feel of the knife against her throat kept her still.
His lips touched the bare skin of her neck. Panic sent a surge of blood pumping through her body. She could not think of what he would do to her.
It was all that filled her mind. A suffocating helplessness warred with her refusal to allow fear to win.
She forgot about the knife and tried to kick him.
Impeded by skirt and petticoats, fooled as she was into thinking she could make quaking limbs obey, it was a futile attempt.
He would use the knife now. She would die before she accomplished all she had dreamed about.
His hips canted forward, and with the aid of the arm around her waist, he lifted her. Her feet dangled between his spread legs.
Angie had never fainted in her life. But a black void beckoned to her now. The need to fight seeped from her body, and she sagged limply against him. She didn’t pray. Prayers had proved useless. All her prayers and pleading, begging and promises, hadn’t saved her child. She had come west to her brother with the hope of healing the raw wound that death had left behind.
For her curiosity, her defiance of Grant’s warnings, there would be no healing. No chance to pick up scattered pieces and rebuild them so that she could go on living. She was going to be raped and killed.
His sudden turn pressed her flat against the rough wood of the smokehouse. The growl of his belly made her wonder if he intended to eat first. The sheer stupidity of the thought made her struggle against his hold.
She did not want to die.
“Open.”
Open? What? It took several times of repeating the word before she realized that he had spoken in English. She couldn’t ask what he meant. Harsh and grating, his voice was an insidious whisper against her ear, repeating the order.
Niko took one step back to allow her room to pull out the peg that latched the door. Like a flower denied life-giving rain, she wilted in his arms. He had meant to frighten her so that she wouldn’t cry out. It was not his intent to leach the spirit of her as the sun leached moisture from the earth.
With his knife hand, he made a quick shift, and pressed the bone handle against her lips. His thumb found a soft niche between the seam of her mouth. His arm slipped. The weight of her breasts rested on his forearm. Sweat beaded on his flesh. He did not want this woman with the smell of rain in her hair.
“Open the door, iszáń.”
Raising an arm numb with fear, Angie fumbled with the latch. How much time had passed? Would Grant come looking for her? No, he wouldn’t. Kathleen would tell him to leave her be.
She only knew she had accomplished opening the door because of the overpowering smell of smoked meats. It was as black in here as the shadows outside. But he couldn’t hold on to her and get what food he wanted. He would have to let her go. Courage was what she needed to wait and then make her move to run.
“So much,” Niko muttered, judging the wealth of meats by dizzying smell. He had wasted enough time with the white woman. He was as aware as she had to be that the man would come to look for her soon.
He needed his hands free to gather enough food to make this raid worth his time. He was a warrior and a hunter, not a gatherer. That was left to the women. And his thoughts came back to what he should do with the one he held in his arms.
Hunger prowled his belly. A wilder hunger prowled his body. He should think of the injustice that had brought him to this pass. Anger over his people’s treatment at the hands of whites was the thing to fan into flame, not the fire this woman stirred in his blood.
“To move is to die,” he whispered against the small shell of her ear.
With the flat blade of his knife pressed against her nose, his hand still covering her mouth, Niko slowly slid his arm from her waist. His breaths were harsh, as if he had run a long way, and he heard the sound of them melding with her own panting breaths. He waited for her to move. He took a step back, needing to distance his body from hers.
His acute hearing picked up the restless stir of the horses in the corral. There was no more time. “Fill the sack.”
Angie clutched the rough cloth shoved into her hand. She couldn’t see a blasted thing, but she felt him remove the knife and hand from her face. The tip did not touch her skin, but a mere movement of air as he trailed it down her chin, following the centerline of her throat, and down, farther still, between her breasts, was a potent threat. The moment she knew he had removed the knife and himself, she forced shaking limbs to move. Hanging from the rafters were hams, sides of bacon too heavy for her, and joints of venison and beef. A well-stocked larder, she recalled telling her brother. He would kill her if he knew that she was helping an Apache steal from him.
The Apache would kill her if she didn’t.
He was strong. He was dangerous. And he was here. Grant, thank the merciful heavens, was still safe inside the house.
Angie struggled to fill the sack. She no more thought of asking for his help than she had of refusing. The rough burlap must have held grain, for it was large, and she filled it mostly with hams, since those were the easiest for her to handle.
“It won’t hold any more,” she said at last, feeling the sweat that had drenched her. The air was too close. Fear of what he would do to her still held sway so that she couldn’t breathe normally.
“The iszáń did good,” Niko said. He stepped up behind her, and from his cloth belt took two of the strips of rawhide that he carried. “Stand against the wall.” The brush of her skirt against his leggings made his manhood swell painfully. Too, too long since he had lain with a woman.
“Wh-what—” Angie had to stop and swallow repeatedly to get moisture back in her mouth. She couldn’t even ask a coherent question. “Me? Will you… please, j-just g-go.”
The rustling of the sack was all she heard, and then he stood close to her again.
“It is good iszáń fears. This time Niko takes meat for his people.” In a flash, he slid the edge of his knife under the button at her throat. He caught the small, pearl-like button before it fell. “Now you breathe.”
Breathe? Was the man crazy, as well as dangerous? He was too close. She could feel the heat of his body. And what did he call her in his language?
A warble came from somewhere outside, and she sensed his attention turned from her.
“Angie!”
“Oh, God, it’s Grant! He’ll kill you!”
Niko did not need her to tell him this. He knew the danger of lingering. Matizo had warned him twice now from where he stood guard over their horses. It had been his choice to leave his Henry rifle with his siquisn. But Matizo was a novice warrior, and the lone survivor of his family. He could not risk his being hurt or caught.
“Lift the sack.”
His snapped order caught Angie by surprise. If her life depended upon it, she couldn’t lift the heavy sack. But your life does depend upon it.
The will to live lent her strength. The fact that he had tied the sack closed gave her a way to grip one end, but at best, Angie could only drag it a few feet.
“Weak. Soft. White iszáń.” Niko spat the words like a white man’s curses. But the anger was for himself. He reached out, and with his long, strong fingers gripped her hair. With a yank that cut off her whimper of fear, he had her against his body. “You wish his death?”
She had no need to ask who. Grant’s shouts, calling her name, were growing louder. The slight shake of her head turned into a violent movement that she couldn’t seem to stop as terror took hold. His voice was hard, cold, so that now he sounded the savage
“You no cry out.”
“N-no.”
Niko had to leave. It wouldn’t be long before the man came to the smokehouse in search of this woman. He did not understand why he did not strike her to silence, or bind her mouth. He could not make sense of his reluctance to let her go.
Angie was frightened. Curiosity had gotten her into tight corners before, but never with her life at risk. Why didn’t he let her go? She didn’t have enough spit left to call out to Grant. Even if she did, she wouldn’t pit Grant against this man. Savage, Angie, he’s a savage.
“Usen has gifted the iszáń with wisdom.” Niko touched her cheek, his fingers brushing the tears that fell. And he knew he could not hurt her, could not take her. He would not be named by the white man’s curse. Savage. He would not do to this woman what had been done to the women of his people.
Never would he see the broken, bleeding body of a woman hurt by his hand. It was enough that he carried those images of his mother, his sister, and others he would not name.
He moved quickly then, slinging the sack over his shoulder and slipping outside. He kept to the shadows as much as he could. Matizo would be waiting, ready to ride.
Darting past the corral fence, he whispered noises to the horses. He did not want to think thoughts of the woman.
The blast of a shotgun roared and split the night into the frightened screams of women, the milling, panicked sounds of the horses, and the man’s yelled warnings.
Niko did not stop his flight. He did not look back. Once he found the path through a small strip of woods, he knew he was safe. The white man had no dogs to set upon his trail. It was the reason he had chosen this outlying ranch to raid.
Matizo was already mounted when Niko reached him. He caught the braided horsehair reins that his brother tossed to him. With care and patience, he secured the sack, talking all the while to his black, who stamped restlessly and turned his head repeatedly to investigate the strange bundle on his back. There was no need for Niko to hurry now. He knew the whites’ ways well. They would not be hunted this night. The fears of the white men were many when they came into the lands of his father. They were afraid of the dark of the night, and the night belonged to the Apache.
Niko smoothed a hand over the black’s powerful neck, offering thanks to Usen that he, his brother and their most precious horses were safe. These men who came to claim land none could own would kill the people, calling them dogs, but they all coveted the Apache’s horses.
“Why were you so long, siquisn? The moon sits heavy in the sky.”
Niko grabbed the black’s mane and swung himself up behind the tied sack. Had he been long with the woman? He thought it moments, moments he bad not wanted to end. With a rough shake of his head, he forced himself not to think of her.
“Ride, little brother. We fill hungry bellies this night. The time does not count.”
Matizo echoed his brother’s wild cry, kicking his bay into a gallop. Only once, as they topped the rise where they had hidden to wait and watch the ranch below, did he turn to see the blaze of lights filling the Anglos’ buildings. Like stick figures, three stood in the clearing, but the night breeze carried no sound to him.
He counted ten turns of the seasons, and never had he felt this chilling dread come upon him.
“Niko,” he called out, his voice soft, as he drew his horse closer to his brother’s. “Never return to this place. It holds ditko for you.”
“Are you still in your cradleboard, Matizo? How would bloodfire hurt me? Is not my name of fire? Coupled with that of Mother Earth? Do you question that the very spirit of my name will protect me?”
“Never do I question the wisdom of the spirits that chose to name you Earthfire. And may the spirit of White Painted Woman and the Thunder People protect you always, my brother.” Matizo spurred his horse ahead.
Niko let him go. What touched his brother in this place? Was this the sign that Matizo was ready to choose his own path? With a heavy heart, he rode on. Warrior or shaman. So it had been said of his brother. For himself, there had never been a choice. The deaths of his family had set the trail he was to follow.
From the tucks in his cloth belt, he took the button he had cut from the woman’s clothes. Controlling the black with the press of his knees, Niko opened his shirt and lifted out his medicine bag. He opened a small space in the deerhide bag and slipped the small, white button inside with all the signs of protection and luck he had gathered over the years.
The fire in his loins had but eased. He could not promise himself that he would not go back to the woman who made him burn.